29

PEEPING THROUGH THE HEAVY VELVET curtains, Lottie was filled with a giddy, nervous energy. It felt like she was back at Maradova during the summer ball, ready to be presented as the fake princess. The crowd sent out a deep hum of chatter, the lights low. But it wasn’t just the play that had Lottie feeling so excited—through her peephole she could see Ellie and Jamie, and they were sitting together.

She’d done it; she’d got them to be a team again, and that meant it was time to turn her attention to more important things. Lottie should have been focusing on the play, making sure it went well so she could get high enough grades to get back into Rosewood, only there was something much bigger at stake. She still hadn’t even begun to solve the mystery of Takeshin’s secret treasure.

She was running out of time.

She had to find something—a clue, anything—that could help her find this hidden treasure. It was the only way to get Sayuri on their side and get the information Banshee had. She was still convinced there was a clue somewhere in the diary, that Rosewood and Takeshin were connected, that they were connected.

“Kabocha-chan . . .”

Lottie turned to see a beautiful and terrifying black cat on its hind legs. This was the feline Rio, a performance so perfect it still made Lottie catch her breath. She looked over her and Miko’s work, the black silky fur that gave way to a spectacular secret. No detail had been overlooked in the costume, and the result was a stunning beast that would make anyone’s blood run cold.

“Are you nervous?” Rio asked with a cocky grin.

“I’m not nervous,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I’m concentrating.”

The lights in the auditorium dimmed, a spotlight spreading over the stage from where Sayuri stepped out from between the curtains. Her porcelain skin glimmered even brighter, and she looked to Lottie now like an unbending spirit.

She introduced the plays in Japanese—lines Lottie had heard over and over during rehearsals, so she understood what was being said.

“Welcome, Takeshin Gakuin summer students. Tonight we will be showcasing the best of the theater courses. From acting, costumes, and makeup to lighting, music, and set design, we hope to immerse you into some wondrous and terrifying tales. The three short plays tonight are all inspired by Kou Fujiwara’s three favorite folk stories: Tanabata, Kaguya-hime, and, last but not least, Fujiwara Sensei’s most beloved story, Nabeshima Bakeneko. We hope you will think fondly of our school’s founder while you enjoy the fantastical display.”

Then the darkness behind the curtains enveloped Sayuri, and with one collective intake of breath the audience was ready.

At the back of the theater Sayuri reappeared beside her Partizan. Haru leaned over and whispered something to her that made Sayuri turn rigid.

Before Lottie could dwell on it, the music started and the audience vanished into darkness.

The first play was Tanabata, and told of two star-crossed lovers brought together by the girl’s father, a god, but forced to separate by him too. Tears made of dancing ribbon bled from her eyes, a fabric river of woe growing on the stage that moved her father enough to let them meet on the seventh day of the seventh month every year. But it was not enough; she could only meet her lover with the help of a flock of magpies, who would make a bridge for her over the river that separated the two. If the magpies failed, they could not meet and would have to wait another year.

Magpies, made of black and white tissue paper illuminated in rainbow lights, fluttered above the audience in dazzling flocks, moved by hidden fans on the stage.

Lottie’s mind’s eye burned with the image of the magpies in Liliana’s diary, flocks of them covering the pages. It was uncanny that something so similar to the pages of Lili’s diary would also appear in one of Kou’s favorite plays.

Moments later, the second play began, the velvet curtains revealing a papier-mâché bamboo forest behind, shrouded with dry ice, a single sparkling trunk, thick and glittering, in the center of the stage.

About to look for Sayuri in the audience, Lottie froze, pulled back to the scene in front of her. A scene she knew so well she could practically feel the mossy earth beneath her toes. The stage had become Takeshin’s own woods, the Kiri Shinrin, with its endless fog and the single impossibly large bamboo hidden within it. And it was there again, the pictures in the diary of the sparkling tree. Even though they weren’t bamboo trees in the diary, she couldn’t help feeling they were connected, that it was a sign.

There was so little time until they left for England, so little time to piece this together, and in the back of her head, frayed like the edge of the torn paper in the diary, were those strange words, and the unlikely possibility that they were important.

A cat

A hiding place

A sword

“Kabocha-chan?”

A voice dragged her from her thoughts. Miko, blue as ever, but more of a navy in the shadows backstage.

“We are next.”

Lottie nodded, but her mind was still half stuck in the mystery of Liliana’s diary. It was as if she were split in two; her body was here in the theater, nervous and excited, but her soul had been spirited away by the performances and stories, floating across the school in a cloud of curiosity.

“Where is your head?” Miko asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “You are somewhere else.”

Locking eyes with Miko, Lottie let everything sink in, the diary, the trees, the fairy tales, the page with the mysterious list, Sayuri and herself.

“I think there is a secret hidden in these plays,” she whispered in the dark, clutching Miko’s arm, just as the curtain came down and thundering applause filled the room.

Miko slowly plucked Lottie’s hand off her. “Then you’d better set up ours quickly so you can figure it out.”

Still in a daze, Lottie tiptoed out with Miko and the other stagehands, propping up the wooden bed that would be Aoi Tōyō’s doom. They draped a ghostly sheet of gauze over the left side of the stage, where shadows of the monster cat would grow and reveal their creation, and in front of both they spread hanging vines to create a garden that would melt away when the prince left.

Lottie was so focused on finding some hidden detail in the play that the last thing she expected was for something to go wrong.

A terrible retching sound echoed where there should have been flutes, but the sound was not the worst part. Rushing past, her hand covering her mouth, was their Aoi Tōyō, the fair maiden, the prince’s favorite, and she was being sick.

“Sumimasen!” the poor girl mumbled in apology, hurrying out of the theater.

They formed a line in her wake, Rio, Miko, Lottie, and the others in the vampire cat production, staring in bewilderment at the now-empty space where their Aoi Tōyō had been.

“Did we just lose our maiden?” Rio asked, the dumbfounded look on his face completely at odds with his elegant makeup.

All Lottie knew was that she’d been looking for a sign, anything to get through to the impenetrable queen of Takeshin, and if she was going to understand what these plays were trying to tell her, she needed to get as close as possible. What she needed wasn’t to watch passively from the sidelines; she had to be a part of it completely. She knew it as a fact. She needed to be in the play.

“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll play Aoi Tōyō.”

Miko and Rio stared at her, mouths wide open in a way she relished, and they gaped even more when she added, “But I’m wearing my tiara.”

The spotlight slowly came up on Aoi Tōyō, peaceful among the low-hanging paper vines that made up the garden. Fog surrounded Lottie’s feet, where her white robe brushed the stage. They had tried their best to comb her hair smooth.

Of all the terrifying, life-threatening things she’d been a part of, this was somehow the scariest thing she’d ever done.

Her head felt tingly where the tiara lay on it, and she was glad to have it as a reminder to be brave, but that was not why she’d demanded it be a part of the show.

She was looking for a sign, proof of Rosewood’s connection to Takeshin, a clue to solving this mystery for Sayuri, and if this was one of Kou’s favorite plays, she wanted to bring a bit of Liliana into it too.

You’re telling a story, she reminded herself. Just this time you’re telling it with your body, not your words.

“All appearance is performance . . .”

She let those words Rio had told her sink right down into her core, allowing the makeup and the costume to spark something inside her. It made her feel powerful. She felt the change within her just as the audience did, her body transforming in front of their eyes to that of the beautiful, serene maiden. It was magic, and it had the scent of roses and moss, two worlds combining inside her. Lottie Pumpkin didn’t exist anymore; it was only Aoi Tōyō.

The dance began. It felt like she’d been through the choreography with their maiden thousands of times, she and Miko determined to get the movements just right. But now, here on stage in front of the whole school, it was more fun than she could possibly have imagined. Twirling and skipping, she felt both graceful and free, the robes fluttering around her like wings.

It felt incredible to be Aoi Tōyō, to be young and full of life and splendor. Forgetting the audience entirely, she wanted the dance to last forever, but as quickly as it had begun the prince appeared, and it came to an end.

Aoi Tōyō stared at the prince, their movements blending together into a rigid march of a dance, mirroring one another. She was his favorite and marrying him was her duty. It made her stomach sink.

All the freedom of her previous display was gone, replaced by something unyielding. The prince and his favorite maiden stepped in time together; she had no choice but to follow the patterns of his body.

In every reading of the vampire cat, Lottie had always felt sad for Aoi Tōyō, that the happy ending didn’t include her, but now she felt sad in a different way. Aoi Tōyō was stuck, chained down by the burdens of expectation and responsibility.

The lights went down, but the ache in Lottie’s chest remained, Aoi Tōyō’s heart sore with despair. She climbed into the bed, the vines and flowers of the garden disappearing above her to give way to the eerie calm of the bedroom set.

Aoi Tōyō lay in the soft flowing silk, the blue spotlight growing around her, unsuspecting of the terrible creature approaching.

It flashed behind her eyelids like a tattoo in her mind: the cats in Liliana’s diary, the stone cats at the shrine, and the cats everywhere in the school, all merging together.

A fan wafted the calming scent of pine and lavender through the dark room, lulling the audience into a sleepy sense of security.

Darkness moved over her, the illusion of nighttime morphing into a solid shape behind the gauze. Rio convulsed and writhed in a twisted dance until the sheet dropped, revealing the monstrous vampire cat. He pounced on the sleeping maiden, meters of red yarn spilling from Aoi Tōyō’s neck and rolling down as the beast feasted on her blood.

This is for the best, whispered a voice deep in her mind.

A hatch in the bed swallowed her up, and a collective gasp from the audience let Lottie know that the trick had worked; her body had seemingly been devoured into nothing.

She was under the stage, chinks in the floorboards letting her see everyone watching, the show still unfolding above. Violins screeched and Rio turned to the audience, shedding his silken black cloak, which melted away, folding and unraveling with an intricate ribbon system Miko and Lottie had devised, to reveal a pool of glossy fabric and hair, with a great white-and-red robe that flowed over the ground, rippling with simmering power. Under his monstrous body stood the deceptively beautiful fake, the vampire cat in the skin of Aoi Tōyō, an angelic demon. Curving his limbs and spinning, Rio performed a mesmerizing dance in the single red spotlight, deceiving and deadly.

Lottie watched, amused by the shocked faces of her Rosewood friends who’d never seen this talent of Rio’s. The twins’ mouths hung open, eyes sparkling. Even Saskia and Anastacia couldn’t hide their fascination; every person in the audience was enraptured by the lethal display of feminine beauty.

And in the center of her vision were Jamie and Ellie. They were sitting together comfortably, the awkwardness that had curled around them starting to rot away like a dying weed. But there was something more, something between them, a shared emotion while they stared up at the space on the stage where Lottie had once been.

This was a feeling that Lottie had never known before, their own invisible rope that she was not connected to. But now, for the first time, she understood it. That Lottie could never have seen it before felt unreal. The weight of obligations, fears, and pressures had made Aoi Tōyō so vulnerable to the vampire cat. How easy it was to give in to it, to let it take you over. Kou and Liliana must have felt it too, and that is why the tale was so important to them.

Black as tar, oozing and thick, it spread like oil, creeping toward its victims. The creature in the story isn’t just a monster; it is what consumes you. The dark dread that blooms in your chest, heavy and sinking, until it eats you up. Everyone reacts to it in a different way: anger, seclusion, distrust.

Lottie had seen it in Ellie; she’d seen it in Jamie. The creature was obligations, fears, and pressures, the loneliest combination, and it wasn’t only her princess and her Partizan who had been bitten by it.